Crash, 1996

Love in the dying moments of the twentieth century

After getting into a serious car accident, a TV director discovers an underground sub-culture of scarred, omnisexual car-crash victims who use car accidents and the raw sexual energy they produce to try to rejuvenate his sex life with his wife.

Metadata

Cronenberg introduced the term New Flesh in his movie Videodrome, 1983. He has since been pushing the boundaries of his creation to an extent where people become sexually deviant in ways that even the Kama Sutra would shy away from.

Ok, let me put it this way. You intentionally crash your car in to an oncoming vehicle and then fuck the willing victim passenger (from the approaching vehicle – now a junk) immediately after killing her husband, who was on the driver’s seat. Who would want to make an entire feature length picture on this abnormal psychological behaviour? Our very own, highly revered and trusted and genre-master, David Cronenberg.

How do you have sex in a broken car with a lady who has full leg braces on both her limbs. You have to watch it to believe.

If you have followed Cronenberg’s career, you would not be surprised at what he has to show, but how he shows it. Brundlefly from The Fly, 1986 was a repelling yet effective creation. We cannot help but feel sorry for the creature that Goldblum transforms into. That was ten years ago before Crash and eighteen years before that other piece of overblown mess, with false, misplaced praise and Sandra Bullock.

James Spader (Ultron) is just the right person for this part. He has a mysterious aura about him that makes him interesting to watch and study.

Sense the electric charge, which lies just beneath the surface. Let it consume you as you watch Deborah Kara Unger‘s (a completely underrated actor who is also extremely desirable) God awful sexual antics (only in the uncut version).

I still cannot decide whether the film entertained or gave lessons in deviant sexuality, but I know this much; I was intrigued throughout – although in a very strange way.